Wednesday, 22 April 2015

I was recently asked a question on my priorities in coalition government ...

In the event of a coalition agreement involving your party which one
policy would you personally fight hardest to include and which one policy
would you refuse to accept?

The one policy that I would fight hardest to include is a bill to reverse
privatization of the NHS and support reinvestment in a publicly funded and
publicly accountable NHS. Ten years ago Oliver Letwin told what he thought
was a private audience that within five years of a Tory government, the NHS
would be privatized. In a televised interview in 2013, Michael Portillo revealed
that if the Tories before the last election had told the British people what
they intended to do with the NHS, people would not have voted for them.
Forced privatization has made the NHS less efficient, taken resources away
from frontline care and lead to worse health outcomes. It must be reversed.

The one policy that I would refuse to accept is continued austerity –
further cuts to public services, punishing the sick, the old, the young, the
disabled, the most vulnerable in our society for the mistakes of the bankers.
While those on benefits are stigmatized and shamed, those who caused the
economic crisis the casino capitalists who gambled with our money, and when
it all went wrong, were bailed out with our money, continue to cash in. Under
this government their wealth has doubled. It is time they started to pay
their way, and to close the gap between rich and poor, so we can move forward
as one nation, with secure jobs, affordable homes, a publicly funded NHS and
a transport system run for passengers not profit.

Monday, 20 April 2015

In response to
a question on housing that I received recently, I gave the following response:

How would you
cater for the housing needs of all people, regardless of age, income, mental or
physical health, citizenship or background?

By abandoning housebuilding
to the private sector successive governments have let us down. Local
authorities no longer build and so fewer homes are being delivered than at any
previous peacetime period since world war one, 109k completed in 2013 compared
to around 300k a year in the 50s to 70s. Just 5% of government housing
expenditure is spent on building new homes. Developers respond to the market –
building houses for those who can afford to pay top prices for them – and are
not interested in meeting the urgent need for affordable homes.

With a shortage of
homes, the waiting lists for social housing have never been longer – more than
1.8 million are on the waiting list for a home? The government’s response? To
sell off our remaining housing stock in a cynical pre-election bribe.

Some families living
in desperate conditions are being forced to wait years for a suitable home.
They may have to live for months in temporary accommodation, uncertain where
they'll be moved to next, or how much longer they'll have to wait for
stability.

The private rented
sector offers short-term leases, sometimes poor conditions and high costs –a
form of housing is unsuitable for many households, especially the
vulnerable and those in need of a stable, secure home.

The Green Party has committed to building 500k socially rented
homes by 2020, increasing the social housing budget from £1.5 to £6 billion by
2017. We’ll raise £5 billion by scrapping mortgage interest tax relief on buy
to let property. This will also greatly reduce housing benefit costs, too large
a proportion of which goes straight to private landlords.

I was asked a question on tax-dodging at the Christ Church Malvern hustings yesterday. In pledging if elected to support a bill to end tax-dodging, this was my response:

"Given that tax dodging hurts the poorest hardest in both the UK and
overseas, would you, if elected, support and promote a new Tax Dodging
Bill that would make it harder for big companies to avoid paying taxes
in the UK and in developing countries?

Paying tax is the contribution each of us makes to living in a civilized society. It pays for our health service, education,
transport infrastructure and much more besides. As we live longer, each
of us will spend the majority of our lives dependent on others and on
such services: taxation is the contribution we make to those services.
None of us lives in isolation. We are all dependent on others.

Without those services industry would not be able to make a profit.
When companies and individuals dodge taxes, the rest of us have to pay
more or else go without these essential services. Quite simply,
tax-dodging is immoral.

If all the tax that was due was
collected, this country would be £120bn per year better off – that is
twice the deficit, and 30x the amount lost to benefit fraud.

How
can this government claim to be serious about collecting tax, when it
cuts the staff at HMRC in half, and allows HMRC to make deals with big
corporations to pay only a fraction of what is due. Instead government
savages the welfare state and penalizes the least well off.

How
can we take seriously an MP whose campaign fund has been financed by
someone like Lord Fink who has said ‘everyone avoids tax’. I don’t avoid
paying tax. I don’t suppose most of the people in this room do.

It is time that those who can step up to the plate and started to pay their way."